Robotic Nation Evidence

7.30.2004

Robotic swarms

QinetiQ - formerly the UK government's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency - has developed technology that would allow a pilot to control up to five aircraft during a mission, without needing to constantly keep a check on them.

So far, the system has been demonstrated as part of a new simulator developed by QinetiQ, modelled on the Eurofighter. The system allows a pilot to program a group of up to five unmanned planes to perform a simple task, like searching an area for enemy vehicles.

The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) under the pilot's control use software "agents" to carry out their mission. These agents are given a goal - to find enemy targets, for example - and can independently deal with the various variables involved.

7.29.2004

An artificial cortex has 20 billion neurons

"CCortex is a system intended to mimic the structure of the human brain, with a layered distribution of neural nets and detailed interconnections. CCortex closely emulates specialized regions of the human cortex, basal ganglia, thalamus and hippocampus. CCortex runs on a high-performance, parallel supercomputer, a Linux cluster with up to 500 nodes and 1,000 processors, 1 terabyte of RAM, and 200 terabytes of storage. With 20 billion neurons and 20 trillion connections, CCortex is up to 10,000 times larger than any previous attempt to replicate, partially or completely, primary characteristics of human intelligence, and is the first neural system to achieve a level of complexity rivaling that of the mammalian brain. "

7.25.2004

Robots and air traffic controllers

This article helps explain why the nation's 15,000 air traffic controllers will soon be replaced by robots. First, the median income of a controller is $91,000. If you eliminate 15,000 controllers, you save something on the order of $1.5 billion per year.

No new controllers are being hired, so there is now a "looming crisis" that has been fabricated from this hiring deficit. With a "looming crisis" and $1.5 billion/year in savings, the natural thing to do will be to replace all of the controllers with software.

Once air traffic control is handled by robots, it will be much easier for the robotic controllers to talk to robotic pilots rather than human ones. So all of the pilots will be replaced by robots as well. We are already 75% of the way there with autopilots anyway.

Which is all fine -- this is the natural march of progress. In theory, airline tickets will get cheaper in the process. But what are these tens of thousands of unemployed people going to do?

And what if you would actually like to become a pilot? What if that job sounds appealing? The job simply will not exist anymore -- human pilots will be extremely unsafe when compared to robot pilots. In 20 or 30 years, people will no longer be allowed to fly planes. It will be too dangerous, so it will be forbidden. See also Why robots will replace pilots sooner rather than later and Robotic Nation for details.

7.22.2004

Robots and libraries

First of all, one would hope that we will eliminate most libraries over the next 30 years as we completely replace paper books with electronic ones. But for those few libraries that remain, we can replace the librarians with robts:

7.21.2004

Really interesting robot movies

From the page: "This movie shows the assembly of a four beam truss structure. This complex assembly requires tight coordination between robots, as well as the human operator. At several points during the construction, the human operator provides assistance."

7.20.2004

Agricultural robots to take over the farm

University of Illinois agricultural engineers have developed several ag robots, one of which actually resembles R2D2, except that it's square instead of round. The robots are completely autonomous, directing themselves down corn rows, turning at the end and then moving down the next row, said Tony Grift, an agricultural engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The long-term goal, he said, is for these small, inexpensive robots to take on some of the duties now performed by large, expensive farm equipment. As Grift asked, 'Who needs 500 horsepower to go through the field when you might as well put a few robots out there that communicate with each other like an army of ants, working the entire field and collecting data?'

Also:

Grift would like to someday see an experimental farm where all of the work is being performed by autonomous robots. And he said the logical place for such an ambitious farm would be Illinois.

This is the point of Robotic Nation -- nearly every business that we see in the economy today will be a place where "all of the work is being performed by autonomous robots." Every factory, store, restaurant, farm, hospital, airport, amusement park, school, etc. will be staffed by robots, not people. That future is 30 years or so away. See Robotic Nation for details.

A page straight out of Manna

The sci-fi book Manna describes a future where computers take over more and more of the tasks in restaurants and retail stores -- places which employ approximately 20 million Americans today. This article takes a page right out of the book:

off Interstate 55 near Cape Girardeau, Mo., and into the drive-through lane of a McDonald's next to the highway and you'll get fast, friendly service, even though the person taking your order is not in the restaurant - or even in Missouri.

The order taker is in a call center in Colorado Springs, more than 900 miles away, connected to the customer and to the workers preparing the food by high-speed data lines. Even some restaurant jobs, it seems, are not immune to outsourcing.

The man who owns the Cape Girardeau restaurant, Shannon Y. Davis, has linked it and 3 other of his 12 McDonald's franchises to the Colorado call center, which is run by another McDonald's franchisee, Steven T. Bigari. And he did it for the same reasons that other business owners have embraced call centers: lower costs, greater speed and fewer mistakes.

He also knows that this call center can move to India, where the costs will be 10x lower. Within 15 years, robotic voice recognition systems will allow these kinds of tasks to be handled completely by robots and kiosks.

Think about how many jobs can already be outsourced to India using this kind of technology (either voice-only or video-phone): bank tellers, job interviewing, directory assistance, tax preparation, security, medicine... The number of jobs we are talking about is immense. See Robotic Nation and these posts for details:

Robotic Surveillance

There are a number of recent articles that all point to one thing: In a very short period of time, every public space will become a place controlled by electronic surveillance. Look at these recent articles:

Touting a 45 percent drop in crime at MacArthur Park with the aid of video cameras as "virtual patrols," the LAPD is seeking funding to expand the program to crime hot spots in the San Fernando Valley and other areas of the city.

Critics see the specter of Big Brother, but Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton said he is so impressed with results from MacArthur Park -- once known as a flourishing crime zone in the city's center -- that he believes the cameras are an essential part of fighting crime in an era of dwindling budgets and strained police personnel.

An unprecedented number of video cameras will be trained on Boston during the Democratic National Convention, with Boston police installing some 30 cameras near the FleetCenter, the Coast Guard using infrared devices and night-vision cameras in the harbor, and dozens of pieces of surveillance equipment mounted on downtown buildings to monitor crowds for terrorists, unruly demonstrators, and ordinary street crime.

For the first time, 75 high-tech video cameras operated by the federal government will be linked into a surveillance network to monitor the Central Artery, City Hall Plaza, the FleetCenter, and other sensitive sites. Their feeds from cameras mounted on various downtown buildings will be piped to monitoring stations in the Boston area and in Washington, D.C., and officials will be able to zoom in from their work stations to gather details of facial descriptions or read license plates.

With Boston Harbor just a few steps from the arena, the Coast Guard will be using its new ''hawkeye system" -- in place in one other port in the nation -- to watch area waterways. The network of infrared imaging, radar, and cameras that operate in both day and night conditions will give security officials a real-time picture of the harbor, and provide agencies an early warning if an unexpected ship enters area waters.

For a decade, Saudi Arabia has been examining proposals for a border surveillance system that would use patrol aircraft, unmanned air vehicles, and early warning systems to detect intruders and border crossings. The report said Riyad has sought a 12 kilometer-deep security zone around all 6,500 kilometers of the land and sea borders.

Such a system would integrate acoustic, seismic, radar, magnetic, and infrared sensors to detect movements of people and vehicles in the border area. In 1990, Thomson CSF, the predecessor of Thales, completed a $5 million feasibility study.

There is also a growing trend toward tracking individuals. For example:

Satellite technology will be used to track 5,000 career criminals who are responsible for one in every 10 crimes in Britain, the Home Secretary David Blunkett will announce tomorrow.

The radical new technology, which has been developed in the US, will enable law enforcement officers to pinpoint the exact location of criminals who have been released early from prison and fitted with electronic tags.

In the short term, these systems will be manned by people. But as vision systems improve, more and more of them will be "manned" by robots.

In theory, these systems will have one extremely beneficial side effect -- there will be a large reduction in crime. Stores and casinos have been using this kind of technology for decades, and it definitely has an effect on crime.

On the other hand, it will allow the creation of huge bubbles designed specifically to exclude people. It is easy to imagine subdivisions, towns, and even entire cities where only the "right people" are allowed in. Imagine going to a city like Washington DC, New York or Palm Springs and being told you may not enter. We cannot imagine it today, but that day will be upon us in the very near future. See also:

7.17.2004

Robots and the concentration of wealth

This article contains a remarkably clear statement of how the concentration of wealth works in America today:

The American economic pie is growing at a solid pace. The odd thing is how the pie is now sliced between the portion going to profits and the portion going to wages. According to the commerce department, the wage slice is now smaller than it's been in 38 years, while the slice going to after-tax corporate profits is bigger than it's been since the government began tracking profits back in 1947. This wage squeeze is hurting middle-class families who, even if they own shares of stock, depend mainly on wages.

To repeat:

The wage slice is now smaller than it's been in 38 years

The profit slice is bigger than it's been since the government began tracking profits back in 1947

Why is this acceleration in the concentration of wealth occurring? According to the article:

Advances in telecommunications now enable many more companies to outsource to places like India and China, where wages are far lower. Or they can easily substitute computers and software for employees who might otherwise expect a raise. If these trends weren't enough to keep wages down, consider that big corporations are bigger and more powerful than ever. Think of Wal-Mart, now employing more Americans than the entire U.S. auto industry. Employers with this kind of clout can keep wages low just by refusing to raise them.

Corporations can also spend billions of dollars on congressional lobbyists and campaign contributions. Thus, the minimum wage has not risen since 1997. In that same period, executive pay has skyrocketed -- for example:

7.14.2004

"Junior" is the world champion chess computer in 2004

A new world computer chess champion was crowned at the 2004 finals in Israel on Monday. The new champ is the latest version of a particularly aggressive and human-like software program called Junior.

Also:

Programs such as Junior analyse far fewer moves per second – about three million - but streamline their work by quickly discounting certain search strategies. "We try to include as much 'chess knowledge' as possible," Freidel told New Scientist.

This allows current programs to perform more effectively on much more modest computer power. Running on a few desktop computers, programs like Junior and Shredder can compete with the world's leading human players. Kasparov was only able to draw with the older version of Junior in match played in 2003.

So we now have computer programs running on "a few desktop computers" that are able to hold their own against the best human players on the planet. Soon the software will run on a single desktop machine. Then it will be able to run as a small background task on a desktop machine. Then it will run on a cell phone. And so on.

The article also says this: "chess programs are widely considered too specialised to have much relevance to research into artificial intelligence." The author is completely missing the point. One way to achieve machine intelligence is through brute force. "Junior" is a brute force chess program. It is the best software available for machine chess, and it is better than human beings at chess.

Another group of robotic researchers will create the best software for walking. Another will create the best software for running. Another will create the best software for shooting baskets in a game of basketball. Another will create software for navigating complex urban environments (streets, buildings, stairs, etc.) on foot. Another will create the best software for driving a car or truck through a city. Another will create the best software for cleaning bathrooms. Another will create the best software for cooking a meal. Another will create the best software for repairing cars. And so on.

When you put all of those pieces of software in a single robot, what you will have is a robot that is better than a human being at walking, running, shooting baskets, navigating complex environments, driving a car or truck, cleaning bathrooms, cooking a meal, repairing cars and playing chess. If you want your robot to do more, you add modules. An "operating system" will help the robot to switch modes between its different areas of expertise. The "intelligence" comes in the robot's ability to do have programs for thousands of different tasks, and to do every one of those tasks better than the best humans.

Three more reasons pilots will be replaced by robots

Robotic Nation predicts that pilots will be replaced by robots on commerical flights by 2015. However, it may be sooner than that...

Air crews look at radiation risk from flying: "The union for pilots at American Airlines is trying to increase awareness among air crews that they are being exposed to enough cosmic radiation to fall into a U.S. government regulated category of radiation workers." Why worry about cosmic radiation exposure for human pilots when you can replace those pilots with robots?

America West Pilots Charged With Being Drunk In Cockpit: "The pilots were videotaped drinking beer for hours at a sports bar until seven hours before the flight. Blood-alcohol results for Cloyd and Hughes were above the state drunkenness standard of 0.08 but below the federal criminal standard of 0.10." Why worry about human pilots getting drunk when you can replace them with robots?

Delta pilots await contract talks: "Pilots [at Delta] have offered pay cuts of 13.5 percent and other work rule changes, while the company has said it must reduce the value of the pilot contract by 45 percent, including pay cuts of 34.5 percent and other contract changes." That's a pretty big pay cut, especially when you consider that the former CEO of Delta left in November with a $16 million pension in his pocket. Why not pay the executives even more by replacing all the human pilots with robots?

If a robot can do the job, human beings are out the door. Pilots, unfortunately, are about to see their jobs vanish.

7.06.2004

More Hospital Robots

The 50-pound machine, which looks like a vacuum cleaner mated to a cabinet, is designed to autonomously ferry loads of linens, medical supplies, X-rays, food and other materials.

In a push to lower costs and free up workers for more critical tasks, hospital officials are turning more and more to robots like TUG to ply their hallways.

Other robots include the RoboCart -- a motorized table -- and the droid-like HelpMate, a four-foot tall cabinet with flashing lights and turn signals that would be welcome in any sci-fi movie.

Why the push toward robots like these? Simple economics:

A 2000 study by Manuel Rosetti, an assistant professor of engineering at the University of Arkansas, found that the University of Virginia Hospital could save as much as $218,000 a year if it replaced 15 human couriers with six HelpMate robots, which would pay for themselves in little over three years.

7.05.2004

Latest product assembly robots

Fanuc Ltd. plans to start selling the world's first industrial robots that are able to carry out fully automated assembly work on cars and consumer electronics products, the Nihon Keizai newspaper reported.

The robots have sensors that control strength of force, enabling them to carry out tasks such as tightening screws... The sensors are also able to control movement of the robots' hands to the order of micrometers, the newspaper said.

The robots will work in teams of three, with one choosing and grabbing appropriate components, and the other two taking and tightening screws, the report said.

7.04.2004

Red light cameras spreading rapidly

A red light camera in Southern California caught one woman in the act -- of cheating.

Hawthorne Officer Mark Escalante said a local resident is challenging his $341 red-light violation ticket.

The ticket was mailed to the registered owner of the car. But the car owner says the camera's automatic videotape shows he wasn't driving -- it was his wife's lover behind the wheel. The jilted husband is getting a divorce.

But the new red-light traffic cameras snagged more than 1,400 motorists last month in Hawthorne, leading to a slew of complaints.

There's been a threefold increase in tickets since the red-light camera were installed this spring. Cameras snapped pictures that resulted in 1,414 tickets issued in June.

Some motorists outraged over getting the tickets storm into the police station to dispute the violations, not knowing the photos come accompanied by videotape.

Imagine how this trend develops. "Red light cameras" will be installed at every intersection. The reason they can spread so rapidly is because they generate revenue -- these robots are self-funded. [Similarly, there are already lots of "toll cameras" used to detect people who do not pay at toll booths.] Then there will be "gridlock cameras" that target people who block busy intersections between lights. Then there will be "speeding cameras" along every stretch of roadway. "Parking cameras" will keep track of every car in a parking lot. There will be cameras tracking cars as they enter every subdivision and apartment complex in order to deter crime. Pretty soon the location of your car will be known every minute of every day.

Then the same thing will happen, using facial recognition and similar technologies, to everyone traveling on foot. As you walk into a mall, a store, an office building, a campus, etc., you will be identified and cataloged.

Then the same thing will happen to protect vulnerable resources. We will see robotic cameras and sentries protecting oil pipelines, rail lines, lakes, power plants, electrical transmission lines and substations, airports, highways and bridges, etc.

In general, this will be a good thing because it will bring an end to anonymous crime and terrorism as we know it today. It will also be our introduction to robotic police. We are already acclimating ourselves to red light cameras -- the first form of widespread robotic policing. In not too many years we will be acclimating ourselves to autonomous humanoid police officers.

Soccer robots to clear mine fields

Robots designed to play soccer will clear mines in war-ravaged countries, an Austrian professor in charge of the project said Tuesday.

The small robots are expected to be effective mine-clearers, said Peter Kopacek, who leads a research team at the Vienna Technical University's Institute for Robot Science. Robots are already used as mine-clearers in war zones around the world, but the soccer robots would "be much more individualized" allowing them to adapt to different tasks unlike existing robots, according to Kopacek.

In robot soccer, a computer server follows the robots' moves with a camera, co-ordinating their movements to score goals. The robots could use this teamwork in mine-clearing, Kopacek added.

7.02.2004

Automation and its effect on jobs

Technology that adds intelligence to computers poses a far more serious threat to jobs than low-wage countries, a research firm said Friday.

The first wave of job-killing technology occurred in manufacturing in the 1990s, when computer-driven robotics introduced across industries from automaking to steel made it possible to produce more product with fewer people, Strategy Analytics said in a recent analysis of emerging technologies.

In the second wave, workers in customer service, help desk, directory assistance, and other support activities in businesses will be replaced by computers that have enough intelligence to handle repetitive tasks that occur during human interaction.

In the new millennium, as the use of intelligent computers increase, jobs will vanish, with several million expected to disappear over the next five to seven years, Cohen said. While less labor to do more work is great for business, there will be an impact on society as people find decent paying jobs harder to find.